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Creative to free Audigy Windows Vista compatibility app

by Parm Mann on 9 May 2008, 08:11

Tags: Creative

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Tony Smith of The Register reports:

In an email sent out to customers yesterday, Creative said the new version of the software will be released on or shortly after 19 May. Unlike previous releases, it won't cost anything. Older versions of the application came with a $10 price tag.

And this made a lot of SoundBlaster Audigy users rather angry. The changes Microsoft made to the way audio is handled by Windows in the Vista era prevented Audigy users from getting the 3D audio and other sound effects generated by their sound cards.

Under Windows XP, MS' DirectSound and DirectSound 3D API were able to mediate communcations between game and audio hardware. That feature was essentially removed from the Vista-oriented DirectX 10, forcing DirectSound calls to be processed solely by the CPU.

No mere driver update would fix this, so Creative offered ALchemy to convert DirectSound calls into their equivalents in OpenAL, an open sound library. But because ALchemy was an application, not a driver, Creative decided customers should pay extra for it.

That annoyed rather a lot of buyers who'd enjoyed using Audigy under XP but suddenly found it didn't work fully under Vista. We agree with them. Vendors shouldn't penalise their customers because of something someone else altogether does.

We've seen software developers charge money for updates that allow previously working apps to gain compatibility with either Vista or Mac OS X 10.5, forcing users to pay twice simply for having the temerity to upgrade their operating system.

By all means charge for new features, but to do so to simply allow a user to carry on using your product is, we think, the height of cheekiness.

So points to Creative for not only relenting, but also for giving refund to folk who had paid.

The news comes a month after the company withdrew threats to sue Brazilan coder daniel_k for writing drivers that improved its products' performance under Windows Vista.

The company's email to customers says the company will put the $9.99 back onto the credit card used to pay it in the first place. Refund requests can be made here. The offer, it warned, is only valid until 30 June.



HEXUS Forums :: 5 Comments

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About bloomin' time too. Creative have taken a right royal arse kicking - deservedly so too. Good to see they're finally starting to listen to their customers before they all migrate to other solutions.

(Sounds a lot like our Labour government really, except they're still getting over the arse kicking stage.)
Would be better still if the apps they shipped (which only work with XP) would actually work with Vista too.

I miss my volume control panel :(
Are they going to fix their broken Vista drivers yet? Far more important.

Just a publicity stunt to try and offset the bad press lately in my oppinion.
Got to agree with Agent. If it wasn't for competition from Auziontech and Asus (damn good competition, too), Creative would still be using the same (bad) business model we have come to expect from them.

I'm still going to buy a xonar card, though.
to little too late.

I gave up with Creative since their farce over L!ve cards. They screwed my Via board with it. I bought a soundstorm2 board and never looked back.

Having seen the furor over the lack of features in Vista (deliberately patched out), Paying for drivers, Crippling previous cards. Lets just say they got what they deserved. Consumer backlash.

Screw your customers. Watch them walk.

Just add them to list of ppl not to buy off… just like RIAA artists.